Community platform Voka WELT

The challenge

Voka is the Flemish Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Voka network represents more than 18,000 companies in Flanders and Brussels, good for 65% of private employment opportunities.

Voka was established in 2004 when the then Flemish Employers Association and the eight regional Chambers of Commerce decided to join forces. The organisation's aim is to create an optimal framework for successful entrepreneurship, and it helps companies to achieve this in all aspects.

Project framework and approach

To support employers and employment agents, Voka started the WELT project in 2016. The goal is to increase the exposure of companies to work experience and training trajectories. Voka was looking for several partners to take on the building of a new platform for this project.

At the same time, the various trajectory counselling tools would also need to be refreshed and given their own home in the WELT platform. Wunderkraut was given the opportunity to work together with Voka on this project.

We started the project together with Imec, by way of a research phase including user interviews. This was how we developed the concept for the platform.

After that, the detail pages of this online community tool were drafted and then designed in the same style as the main Voka.be site. For the technical side, we utilised ‘Pattern Lab’, a component library that had already been built for Voka.be. The development is now in full swing.

+18,000

members

in Flanders & Brussels

65%

of private

employment

30 sector

organisations

cooperate closely with Voka

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#C0C0C0 1

THE SOLUTION

Visually powerful platform

The platform, as the foundation for the trajectory counselling, must fulfil a variety of needs and function as a central entry point. On the one hand, it contains a great deal of information for the various target groups. This way the employer can see a complete visual representation of the trajectory. He or she can view training sites and monitor the work points.

The employment agent manages the candidates and ensures knowledge exchange. The Voka coordinator maintains an overview and can schedule meetings. As always, user-friendliness is key.

In addition to the wide range of info, the new platform must also stand out visually, but that is no problem for Wunderkraut.

Dashboards, always running the latest updates customised to the various target groups, will trigger the users to actively get to work. Documents are easy to add and can be consulted quickly. And, personalised content is made available for the logged-in user, content specifically geared to the needs of the project.

CRM system integration

It was also important to integrate Voka's existing CRM system. All of Voka's employers had already been entered into it, greatly increasing the interaction.

Besides that, for this specific project Voka reports to the Flemish Government, which supports WELT via subsidies. The innovative platform is also an ideal medium for these interactions.

Thanks to the technical expertise and the analytical prowess of our team, Wunderkraut is the perfect complement to this project. By means of workshops, analyses and interviews, the contours of the project were revealed step-by-step. And, in an earlier phase, the wireframes provided a clear visual image.

This, once again, demonstrated the dimensions of this project. Via various interactions, the details of all the wireframes were further elaborated together with Voka.

The future

Pattern Lab

During a previous project, the development of Voka.be, a great deal of time was spent on ‘Pattern Lab’. This is a component library that was built independently of the website and which is now an excellent foundation for the WELT platform. This library can be used in the future for other potential projects such as Plato and Bryo.

Right now, the training trajectory platform is in full development. The next step is its final delivery in April, followed by a follow-up and evaluation phase.